Episodes

  • S2 Ep6: S2 #6 The Public Good: Maximising Outcomes

    S2 Ep6: S2 #6 The Public Good: Maximising Outcomes
    Oct 26 2022
    “Major advances, even in a crisis, are made in the years and decades before the crisis (...) these are not miracles that happen by chance.”  - Jeremy Farrar

    We have all felt the impact of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 - but we have not felt it equally. In this episode, the last of this series, host Bruno Giussani dives into the ecosystems around scientific innovation, looking at the way different forms of collaboration, legal frameworks, and the respective roles of public institutions, private companies and philanthropy in enabling (or not) technological advances. Joining Bruno are the director of the Wellcome Trust, Jeremy Farrar, reflecting on the role of philanthropic organisations as well as the necessity of long-term investment in science, discovery and education; Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist at the WHO, talking about the role the WHO plays on the international stage and the struggles for equity in treatment - and the WHO’s first mRNA technology transfer hub in Africa; Els Torreele, biomedical scientist and researcher in equitable public health policy, diving deep into the effects of patent-driven and commercially-funded medical research; and Ben Perry, medicinal chemist involved in drug discovery, commenting on the complexities of molecule control.

    Guests: Els Torreele, Ben Perry, Jeremy Farrar, Soumya Swaminathan
    Host: Bruno Giussani


    Production
    CERN, Geneva: Claudia Marcelloni, Lila Mabiala, Sofia Hurst
    Whistledown Productions, London: Will Yates and Sandra Kanthal
    Copyright: CERN, 2022
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    26 mins
  • S2 Ep5: S2 #5 A Global Perspective: The Power of Collaboration

    S2 Ep5: S2 #5 A Global Perspective: The Power of Collaboration
    Oct 26 2022
    “There’s no such thing as too many scientists” - Ben Perry

    Join host Bruno Giussani as he delves into the rationale and practice of large scale scientific collaborations. In this episode Ben Perry, medicinal chemist with DNDI (Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative) talks about the nature and successes of open science. Rolf Apweiler, co-director of the European Bioinformatics Institute that collects, analyses and distributes data to the worldwide scientific community, explains the challenges researchers face in accessing the data they need and the way EBI seeks to streamline the process. The Wellcome Trust’s director Jeremy Farrar discusses the interconnectedness of the world and how frameworks for international collaboration are essential for the future especially in areas where the scientific and the political overlap. And Charlotte Warakaulle, director for International Relations at CERN, describes the “CERN model” and elaborates on its scientific and technological contributions to health.

    Guests: Ben Perry, Rolf Apweiler, Jeremy Farrar, Charlotte Warakaulle
    Host: Bruno Giussani

    Production
    CERN, Geneva: Claudia Marcelloni, Lila Mabiala, Sofia Hurst
    Whistledown Productions, London: Will Yates and Sandra Kanthal
    Copyright: CERN, 2022
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    22 mins
  • S2 Ep4: S2 #4 Healthtech & Ethics: Getting it Right

    S2 Ep4: S2 #4 Healthtech & Ethics: Getting it Right
    Oct 26 2022
    “We are so taken in by technology that we forget that technology is a tool that should be used with an outcome in mind.” - Soumya Swaminathan

    In this episode, host Bruno Giussani and his guests wade through the quagmire of healthtech ethics and fairness, exploring topics such as how the notions of right and wrong are changed by technology, data ownership and privacy, mind-manipulation technologies and the marvels of machine-learning systems which often are black boxes that not even the specialists understand. In conversation with Bruno are Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist of the WHO; George Church, the founding father of genomics; Pushmeet Kohli from DeepMind; technoethicist and entrepreneur Juan Enriquez; neuroscientist Olaf Blanke of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology; and Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna.

    Guests: Soumya Swaminathan, George Church, Pushmeet Kohli, Juan Enriquez, Olaf Blanke, Jennifer Doudna
    Host: Bruno Giussani

    Production
    CERN, Geneva: Claudia Marcelloni, Lila Mabiala, Sofia Hurst
    Whistledown Productions, London: Will Yates and Sandra Kanthal
    Copyright: CERN, 2022
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    30 mins
  • S2 Ep3: S2 #3 Genomics: Cracking and Editing the Code

    S2 Ep3: S2 #3 Genomics: Cracking and Editing the Code
    Oct 26 2022
    “We finally have a way of making an organism resistant to all viruses.” - George Church

    Gene editing, complete virus resistance, longer healthspans, reversing ageing - these are no longer concepts consigned to the pages of science fiction, but real research that host Bruno Giussani explores in this episode. Jennifer Doudna, who shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her foundational work on the gene-editing technology CRISPR, talks about the first 10 years of CRISPR and the possibilities created by its combination with artificial intelligence. George Church, considered the founding father of genomics, shares some of his latest research that could lead to making us resistant to all pathogenic viruses and expand our healthspan. Abasi Ene-Obong, CEO of startup 54Gene in Nigeria, describes his work to make sure African genetic data become better represented in the field.

    Guests: Jennifer Doudna, George Church, Abasi Ene-Obong
    Host: Bruno Giussani


    Production
    CERN, Geneva: Claudia Marcelloni, Lila Mabiala, Sofia Hurst
    Whistledown Productions, London: Will Yates and Sandra Kanthal
    Copyright: CERN, 2022
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    33 mins
  • S2 Ep2: S2 #2 The Biological Revolution: Tools & Tells

    S2 Ep2: S2 #2 The Biological Revolution: Tools & Tells
    Oct 26 2022
    “I think the way we do medicine these days is broken.” - Michael Snyder

    In this second episode, join host Bruno Giussani as he examines the specific tools powering the biological revolution. He is joined by Michael Snyder, geneticist and founder of the Snyder Lab at Stanford University, to talk about wearable technologies; by Pushmeet Kohli, AI for Science Lead at Deepmind (a subsidiary of Alphabet) to understand AlphaFold, the machine learning system capable of predicting the structure of nearly all proteins known to science, and its impacts; and Ben Perry, medicinal chemist at the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDI) to talk about AlphaFold’s benefits for drug development.

    Guests: Michael Snyder, Pushmeet Kohli, Ben Perry
    Host: Bruno Giussani


    Production
    CERN, Geneva: Claudia Marcelloni, Lila Mabiala, Sofia Hurst
    Whistledown Productions, London: Will Yates and Sandra Kanthal
    Copyright: CERN, 2022
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    28 mins
  • S2 Ep1: S2 #1 The Future of Health: Technology’s Role

    S2 Ep1: S2 #1 The Future of Health: Technology’s Role
    Oct 26 2022
    From the use of the data captured by wearable devices to the relationship between doctors and patients in an AI world, in our first episode host Bruno Giussani explores visions of future health. Jane Metcalfe, founder of Neo.Life (and, three decades ago, co-founder of Wired magazine) elaborates on the coming neo-biological revolution and the human immunome; Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist of the World Health Organisation and head of its science division, reflects on which innovations will have the biggest impacts on global health and; Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute and author of “Deep Medicine”, explains how artificial intelligence can make healthcare human again. 

    Guests: Jane Metcalfe, Soumya Swaminathan, Eric Topol
    Host: Bruno Giussani

    Production
    CERN, Geneva: Claudia Marcelloni, Lila Mabiala, Sofia Hurst
    Whistledown Productions, London: Will Yates and Sandra Kanthal
    Copyright: CERN, 2022
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    26 mins
  • S2: S2: Trailer - The CERN Sparks! Podcast - Future Technology for Health

    S2: S2: Trailer - The CERN Sparks! Podcast - Future Technology for Health
    Oct 25 2022
    The second season of the CERN Sparks! podcast: 6 episodes focused on discussing some of the present of health tech and science and taking a deep look at the many exciting, often risky and generally thrilling possibilities of future technologies for health. With Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna; the founding father of genomics, George Church; the WHO’s chief scientist, Soumya Swaminathan; and many other guests.
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    3 mins
  • S1 Ep6: S1 #6 Fast and slow AI — with Francesca Rossi and Daniel Kahneman

    S1 Ep6: S1 #6 Fast and slow AI — with Francesca Rossi and Daniel Kahneman
    Aug 17 2021
    Francesca Rossi is an influential global leader in AI research. Daniel Kahneman is one of the greatest living cognitive psychologists. In the final podcast in the series, our guests take Daniel’s revolutionary “fast and slow” systems of thought as inspiration for rewriting AI, and debate the nature of thought itself. “I really find it difficult to imagine why there should be anything at which humans are essential in the domain of intelligence,” says Kahneman. Is there anything that humans can do that AI cannot in principle do?
    To find out more, join hosts Mark Rayner and Abha Eli Phoboo as they speak with Anima and John on the subject of Creative AI.
    Daniel Kahneman is a world-renowned cognitive psychologist and winner of the 2002 Nobel prize in Economics. Francesca Rossi is Global Ethics Leader at IBM and President-Elect of AAAI.

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    31 mins